"Instant Bloat" cure?

I have stumbled upon (several times) an action to reduce the used space
on the hard drive by virtually half. I suspect it is ridding the hard
drive of backups, etc, for Windows Updates, or the like. Problem is, I
can't remember what I did to accomplish it. In the last 48 hours, with
only three Windows updates totaling 30 Mb, my "used" hard drive space
has jumped from 55 to 90 Gb! I know there is a quick fix for this, but
as I said - I don't recall what I did to accomplish it before. Any help
appreciated - please?

On 21 Nov 2014, Tony wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

I have stumbled upon (several times) an action to reduce the used
space on the hard drive by virtually half. I suspect it is
ridding the hard drive of backups, etc, for Windows Updates, or
the like. Problem is, I can't remember what I did to accomplish
it. In the last 48 hours, with only three Windows updates
totaling 30 Mb, my "used" hard drive space has jumped from 55 to
90 Gb! I know there is a quick fix for this, but as I said - I
don't recall what I did to accomplish it before. Any help
appreciated - please?

I'm suppose you're thinking of Disk Cleanup, which now includes the
removal of unneeded Update backup files.

Windows Explorer | right click on the drive in question | Properties |
Disk Cleanup | Clean up system files

On 11/21/2014 8:41 PM, Tony wrote:
I have stumbled upon (several times) an action to reduce the used space
on the hard drive by virtually half. I suspect it is ridding the hard
drive of backups, etc, for Windows Updates, or the like. Problem is, I
can't remember what I did to accomplish it. In the last 48 hours, with
only three Windows updates totaling 30 Mb, my "used" hard drive space
has jumped from 55 to 90 Gb! I know there is a quick fix for this, but
as I said - I don't recall what I did to accomplish it before. Any help
appreciated - please?
IN addition to disk cleanup, (don't forget the option to delete
a gigabyte of restore points)
I find that bleachbit deletes a zillion temporary browser files.
Saves space and also speeds up browsing.

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 22:06:24 -0800, mike wrote:


IN addition to disk cleanup, (don't forget the option to delete
a gigabyte of restore points)
I find that bleachbit deletes a zillion temporary browser files.
Saves space and also speeds up browsing.

The idea behind Temporary Internet Files or persistent browser cache is an
assumption that people frequent many of the same sites time after time, so
it makes sense to cache things like logos and certain images, among other
things. With an item cached, it'll be much faster for the browser to access
it instead of requesting it from the server every time.

With that in mind, if you have a normal sized persistent cache, your
browsing experience is likely to be slower immediately after emptying the
cache rather than faster.

--

Char Jackson

On 11/21/2014 10:19 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 22:06:24 -0800, mike wrote:


IN addition to disk cleanup, (don't forget the option to delete
a gigabyte of restore points)
I find that bleachbit deletes a zillion temporary browser files.
Saves space and also speeds up browsing.

The idea behind Temporary Internet Files or persistent browser cache is an
assumption that people frequent many of the same sites time after time, so
it makes sense to cache things like logos and certain images, among other
things. With an item cached, it'll be much faster for the browser to access
it instead of requesting it from the server every time.

With that in mind, if you have a normal sized persistent cache, your
browsing experience is likely to be slower immediately after emptying the
cache rather than faster.

Can't argue with your logic.
My experience is that my overall computing experience is improved by
periodically running bleachbit.
Use it. Don't use it. Your choice.

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 23:41:02 -0500, Tony wrote:

I have stumbled upon (several times) an action to reduce the used space
on the hard drive by virtually half. I suspect it is ridding the hard
drive of backups, etc, for Windows Updates, or the like. Problem is, I
can't remember what I did to accomplish it. In the last 48 hours, with
only three Windows updates totaling 30 Mb, my "used" hard drive space
has jumped from 55 to 90 Gb! I know there is a quick fix for this, but
as I said - I don't recall what I did to accomplish it before. Any help
appreciated - please?

Disk Cleanup

Check

- Service Pack Backup Files

- Windows Update Cleanup

[OK]

Reboot

C:\Windows\winsxs

is probably the culprit. Mine is now around 10 GiB.

--
s|b

On 11/22/2014 10:20 AM, s|b wrote:
On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 23:41:02 -0500, Tony wrote:

I have stumbled upon (several times) an action to reduce the used space
on the hard drive by virtually half. I suspect it is ridding the hard
drive of backups, etc, for Windows Updates, or the like. Problem is, I
can't remember what I did to accomplish it. In the last 48 hours, with
only three Windows updates totaling 30 Mb, my "used" hard drive space
has jumped from 55 to 90 Gb! I know there is a quick fix for this, but
as I said - I don't recall what I did to accomplish it before. Any help
appreciated - please?



My thanks to all who replied - and especially the tip about BleachBit
which is a great program. The culprit was excessive "System Restore"
images. I'm still getting used to Windows 7, and XP didn't have System
Restore images *nearly* that big! Again, thanks all!

Tony

On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 14:40:35 -0500, Tony wrote:

My thanks to all who replied - and especially the tip about BleachBit
which is a great program. The culprit was excessive "System Restore"
images. I'm still getting used to Windows 7, and XP didn't have System
Restore images *nearly* that big! Again, thanks all!

System Restore is one of the first things I disable when installing
Windows. I tried it a couple times and it always left files behind after
a restore.

I use Macrium Reflect to create an image of my C: drive and copy other
files (My Documents, My Pictures, ...) to an external drive. Macrium
allows me to create an image under Windows (the image is saved on D: , a
second hdd). Whenever I restore an image, no crap is left behind.

--
s|b

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 23:41:02 -0500, Tony wrote:
I have stumbled upon (several times) an action to reduce the used space
on the hard drive by virtually half. I suspect it is ridding the hard
drive of backups, etc, for Windows Updates, or the like. Problem is, I
can't remember what I did to accomplish it. In the last 48 hours, with
only three Windows updates totaling 30 Mb, my "used" hard drive space
has jumped from 55 to 90 Gb! I know there is a quick fix for this, but
as I said - I don't recall what I did to accomplish it before. Any help
appreciated - please?

If it's by half, my guess is the Compression attribute. Check it on the
drive or folder/file property dialog. For folder/file, press the Advanced
button to show the dialog that contains the Compression attribute setting.

On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 19:38:33 +0700 "JJ" wrote In
the last 48 hours, with
only three Windows updates totaling 30 Mb, my "used" hard drive space
has jumped from 55 to 90 Gb! I know there is a quick fix for this, but
as I said - I don't recall what I did to accomplish it before. Any help
appreciated - please?


Windows update will create a Restore Point as part of normal operation.
Could that be the space that went missing? Have you checked the
allocations for each partition for System Restore? By default, the amount
of storage to set aside for Sys Restore is quite large.